This comes under "too good to be true." I looked up any discussions on
usenet hoping to find out from others more knowledgable if its real. This
usually works but there's been no discussion to speak of. Usually this kind
of thing (free or cheap energy) turns out to be a scam, but I don't know
enough of the physics to tell, so I'd appreciate some knowledgable
feedback. I went to [Only registered users see links. ] and it says corporations
won't fund them because they can't make any money. That seems unlikely
because even if plasma focus reactors did put the oil and nuclear people
out of business, someone else would make alot of money building the
replacement infrastructure. So I'm suspicious of such claims. However, the
research thus far was funded by NASA, so I doubt its a total scam. I'm so
confused !!!!

Recently, at the IEEE-APS International Conference on Plasma Science
in Banff, Alberta Canada, I announced experimental results that
promise cheap, clean, non-radioactive energy. The results demonstrated
the viability of a compact fusion device called the plasma focus,
opening the door to a new energy source possibly 100 times cheaper
than oil and gas. The experimental work was performed last year at
Texas A&M University in a project funded by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory of NASA. Other scientists congratulated us on the success.

Yet, instead of hailing this new work, a Los Alamos National
Laboratory manager threatened two members of our research team with
firing if they didn't repudiate the results. Funding for the research
has been cut off, and the mainstream press has ignored both the new
discovery and the effort to suppress it. What's going on here?

The new results are important because they show that the high
temperatures -- over a billion degrees -- needed to burn
hydrogen-boron fuel can be reached. A plasma focus reactor using
hydrogen-boron fuel would serve as an almost ideal source of energy.

It generates no long-lived (more than a few minutes half-life)
radioactive byproducts. The fusion energy is released mainly as a
beam of charged alpha particles, which can convert directly to
electricity without the use of expensive steam turbines. A plasma
focus device, with a core about the size of a large coffee can,
costs less than $500,000 to build. Once fully developed, focus-based
fusion reactors would also be small, making possible decentralized
sources of power. With the reactors so economical, the successful
development of plasma focus hydrogen-boron reactors could eventually
render oil and gas nearly worthless.

We achieved these high temperatures, together with high densities,
last August and posted a scientific paper describing the results
to an online physics archive ([Only registered users see links. ])
in May, as well as submitting it to the journal Physica Scripta.

Then came the attempt to suppress this work. In May, Dr. Richard
Seimon, Fusion Energy Science Program Manager at Los Alamos, demanded
that Dr. Hank Oona, a Los Alamos staff physicist involved in the
experiment, dissociate himself from comparisons that showed the new
results superior in key respects to those of the tokamak and to
remove his name from the paper describing the results. The tokamak,
a much larger and more expensive device, has been the centerpiece
of the U.S. fusion effort for 25 years. The demand was particularly
outrageous since Oona was neither funded by Los Alamos nor at Los
Alamos while participating in the experiment.

Seimon didn't dispute the data or the achievement of high
temperatures. He objected to the comparisons with the tokamak, arguing
that it was biased against the tokamak. In addition, Seimon pressured
Dr. Bruce Freeman of Texas A&M, another co-author of the paper, to
advocate the removal of all tokamak comparisons from the paper.

Both of my colleagues, who did tremendous work on this experiment,
had carefully reviewed and approved the paper originally and had
endorsed its conclusions. For them to be forced to recant under
threat of firing is outrageous. It undermines the very basis of
scientific discourse if researchers aren't allowed by their
institutions to speak honestly to each other. Los Alamos has no
more right to tell scientists what to think than the Catholic Church
had to tell Galileo.

Why would Los Alamos try to suppress this work? For 25 years,
government officials and program managers have based the fusion
program exclusively on the tokamak, nearly eliminating all other
approaches such as the plasma focus. Tokamak devices can't lead to
drastically cheaper energy. Tokamaks use deuterium-tritium fuel,
which creates high-energy neutrons. These neutrons would then be
used for conventional steam turbine generators. Most of the capital
cost of electricity comes from the steam cycle, not the energy
source, so a significant reduction in energy costs is not possible
with the tokamak. Unlike the plasma focus, they pose no threat to
oil and gas.

The Department of Energy, which funds Los Alamos and many other
labs, defends the tokamak tooth-and-nail in part through sheer
bureaucratic inertia. But the Department's leadership has become
increasingly indistinguishable from that of the oil and gas
corporations, and it has no interest whatsoever in funding research
that might eventually threaten those corporations.

The plasma focus does pose a real threat to the existing fossil-fuel
energy multinationals, the Exxons and Enrons of the world. Not only
would focus fusion reactors be cheap, producing energy at the
equivalent of oil at a dime a barrel, they would be decentralized,
with each reactor producing perhaps 20 megawatts, enough for a town.
This would both reduce transmission costs and inhibit corporate
control of energy supply.

At the moment, there is NO U.S. government funding for focus fusion
research. The NASA program that was funding this research, at a
very low level, has been cut. Research at some 15 plasma focus
groups in other countries is also crippled by lack of funds. Yet
the amount of money needed is tiny; the next step in the research
will require only about $500,000.

The amount of money needed is so small that it can be raised from
the general public. To do this, we have set up the Focus Fusion
Society ([Only registered users see links. ]) with the aim of developing focus
fusion on a non-profit basis. The more results we get, the more
difficult it will be to suppress this technology. We can all support
this work by joining this society and by spreading the word about
it; forwarding this message to email lists and organizations that
have an interest in cheap, clean, decentralized energy; holding
meetings; getting on local radio shows; and writing letters to local
papers. By taking matters into our own hands, we can change energy
policy.

As engineers and scientists, we frequently find that work we do
with benefits to society is frustrated by corporate interests and
governmental polices that serve them. Often, all we can do is
protest. This time, instead of just protesting, we have the
opportunity to actually do something about energy policy. We can
ensure this technology gets fully researched and developed and not
suppressed.

"Rodeored" <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote in message
news:Xns93AFB15B35846rodeorednetstepnet@140.99.99. 130...
on

-- -- Quoted propoganda -- --
The goal of the Focus Fusion Society is to help to develop an
environmentally safe, cheap and unlimited energy source. We will do
this by funding research into hydrogen-boron fusion using the plasma
focus device. The successful development of Focus Fusion Energy will
eliminate the environmental destruction of fossil fuel use, free the
world economy from the crushing burden of high energy prices and
eliminate the continual wars aimed at maintaining control of oil
resources. It will give to everyone decentralized, small-scale power,
eliminating corporate control of energy. It will provide the cheap
energy needed to eliminate world poverty. It will make possible a new
space propulsion system that will radically cheapen and speed space
exploration. It will free the world from 19th-century energy sources
and provide power for the Third Millenium.
-- -- end quote -- --

And how pray tell do you limit people to "small-scale power" if it
provides a "cheap and unlimited energy source?"

Seems kind of hypocritical... is there going to be an agency that
clamps down on how people generate and use this hypothetical energy,
say, the Focus Fusion Society?